Keep an eye on the analysts with new publication

January 09, 1994|By Knight-Ridder News Service

It can be worth knowing what securities analysts think about a stock, if only so you can do the opposite of what they recommend.

And so active stock-pickers might be interested in Analyst Watch, a new publication from Zack's Investment Research. The company's business has been selling to brokers and institutional investors information about analysts' estimates of corporate earnings and analysts' recommendations on stocks.

Stock prices often jump or fall in response to an analyst's buy or sell recommendation or when a company's profit exceeds or matches the forecasts of analysts.

Analyst Watch gives a score card on each of about 4,000 companies followed by securities analysts. It lists how many analysts follow a stock, how many are recommending the purchase or sale of the stock, the past earnings of a stock and analysts' estimates of future earnings.

It lists stocks with the most-favorable and least-favorable ratings by analysts and stocks with the largest increases or decreases in analysts' earnings estimates. Subscribers get the 180-page main book each month plus a 40-page biweekly update.

Analyst Watch is pricy for the casual investor -- $249 for a year, $398 for two years, $55 for a three-month trial. The phone number for Zack's is (800) 399-6659.

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For investors of modest means or tightwad proclivities, dividend reinvestment plans -- DRIPs for short -- are a nifty way to methodically build a portfolio of common stocks.

The plans allow stockholders to buy more shares of stock by reinvesting dividends.

The most useful guide I've seen for investing in DRIPs is the "Directory of Dividend Reinvestment Plans," a paperback published by Dow Theory Forecasts, which also puts out DRIP Investor, a monthly newsletter on dividend reinvestment plans.

The directory is sold for $15.95 by Dow Theory Forecasts, 7412 Calumet Ave., Hammond, Ind. 46324-2692.